Every guitarist with decent left-hand chops has known this tendency: you noodle around with legato (i.e. “hammer on/pull off”) riffs on the lower strings when warming up or just musically jerking around.
You can come up with all sorts neat riffs and grooves down in that lower range. Write some of them down, interlock them together, and you can get some pretty solid hard rock/metal grooves upon which to base a song. This is what inspires a lot of my contrapuntal writing – how low-tuned electric guitars sound just sick and sludgy down in the lower register. See my latest cover: Party Rock Anthem:
Since I’m always so late to the party on styles and trends its no surprise that there’s a whole metal sub-genre out there dedicated to this soud called djent. I first heard the word interviewing the French guitar virtuoso Unfrethead for my podcast site BandsLikeZappa.com. Its a style pioneered by Periphery but especially Swedish metal gods Messugah.
The style is characterized by low-tuned, fuzzed out electric guitars; complex, syncopated interlocking rhythms, and the occasional death growl vocal.
I’ve come across the following djent-style covers of pop songs on Youtube that have me mesmerized. I’ve already begun shopping for an 8-string baritone guitar so I can rip one of these off for my next project. Enjoy: